Posts in Category: Pic of the Day
Goldbug?
Teneral dragonfly? Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine
This is a newly emerged dragonfly from Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area in West Kennebunk Maine. Though I have looked through my dragonfly book, it does not cover tenerals, so I am have little idea what it is. Hopefully someone will help me with the ID. I love the look of it, as though it were fashioned from gold. (If I had to guess, it would be a female Saffron Winged Meadowhawk…but that would be a wild guess. 🙂
Sony RX10iii at 600mm. 1/250th @ ISO 250 @ f4. Processed and cropped slightly in Lightroom.
Day Lily
Day Lily, our yard, Kennebunk Maine
Our small yellow Day Lilies have been in bloom for a week in the front garden, but these showy blooms at the end of the drive just bloomed yesterday. We were trying to figure out where they came from. I might have bought them last year, and they might have been transferred from another bed where they were not doing well, but at any rate, they are new at the end of the drive this year…and doing very well there. 🙂 Greeting guests. Like the folks at the Walmart door. Maybe. Certainly just as cheerful as the best of them. They were in deep afternoon shadow when I got around to photographing them.
Sony RX10iii at 88mm equivalent. 1/40th @ ISO 250 @ f5.6. Program Shift for greater depth of field. Processed in Lightroom (cropped slightly and a small amount of vignette added).
Wood Lily, Blueberries, and Little Green Metallic Bees. Happy Sunday!
Wood Lily, Blueberries, Little Green Metallic Bees, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
There are still lots of Wood Lilies in bloom out on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area. I have only explored the Day Brook Pond side this summer so far, but, despite earlier impressions, the Wood Lily bloom is at least as good as last year, and maybe better. (It is about a week late, which contributed to my earlier disappointment.) Yesterday, I found a bunch growing right in among the ripe blueberries and wanted to frame both the blue and the bright red/orange in the same shot, but as I focused I noticed the Green Metallic Bees at work gathering the abundant pollen of the flower. I have shots where I adjusted the camera’s program to get the blueberries in better focus for better color contrast, but for this shot I was after the motion of the bees, so I let the camera choose a high shutter speed. (Photography, like most things in life, is all about choices and balance.) I remember finding my first Green Metallic Bee among the flowers of our yard a few years ago, and being totally amazed that such a creature could exist. In this shot we have two species, one much smaller than the already small Green Metallic, but clearly in the same family.
This shot, to my eye, has captured a vivid slice of life…full of a rich variety of color, form, and texture, and alive with energy. But then, so often, that is what the generous eye sees in the world around us…life both abundant and bright with promise…with the energy of the spirit at work in the world. And there is a unity. The bees are not separate from the flowers. As they gather the pollen of one plant and carry it to another, they are an essential part of the Wood Lilies’ life…there would be no more Wood Lilies without their action. Even the way the Wood Lilies and Blueberries are growing together must serve both…it is always about choices and balance…fulfilling the spirit’s vision of abundant life. If you push back behind the surface of this second, or any second, you become aware of the pure radiant light of creation at the center…expanding, expressing itself in form and color and texture, in all that lives and all that is…expressing itself with intelligence (choice and balance) and with all embracing love. You become aware of God. And God’s light fills you, not from the outside in, but from the inside out, as you realize yourself as another expression of the creative love and light that is all in all. Choice and balance…unity. Generosity.
Happy Sunday! And may your eye be generous.
Chipper at the pond
Chipmunk, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine
Chipmunks are always more attractive in the field, as opposed to on our back deck on the bird feeders. This one posed so nicely on a branch hanging over the water at Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area. It is actually the pattern of out of focus leaves and water behind the chipper that lifts the image slightly above the average “portrait of chipmunk”. Or that’s what I think 🙂
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 160 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Red-eyed Tree Frog
Red-eyed Tree Frog, The Lodge at Pico Bonito Honduras
Before it slips totally into memory, we return to Honduras for this Red-eyed Tree Frog, found by Elmer Escoto, our guide, on the night hike at The Lodge at Pico Bonito. The Lodge has dammed a small stream just into the rainforest to form two small ponds where the frogs breed. The tree frogs are only active a night, so you have to go out with flashlights and listen for their calls and track them down among the leaves. They don’t seem to be bothered by the lights, or by the camera flash. Once found they will pose. The trick is to get someone to hold a flashlight on them so you can focus, then let the camera flash light the frog.
Sony RX10iii at 412mm equivalent field of view. 1/60th @ f4 @ ISO 2500. Processed in Lightroom.
Wood Lilies again
Wood Lilies, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
I hope you don’t mind another Wood Lily shot. The season is short and I have to get my shots in while they bloom 🙂 This cluster of three, at Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, with the petals still wet from overnight rains, shows off the lily at its best.
Sony RX10iii at 135mm equivalent field of view. Some program shift for depth of field. f6.3 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom.
Cedar Waxwing
Cedar Waxwing, Quest Ponds, Kennebunk Maine
There is some kind of small Dancer Damselfly emerging right now at our local ponds. They come up from the water’s edge in a visible tide, two or three in sight at any moment, and going on for hours. And where they are emerging, there are Cedar Waxwings. The birds gather around the pond, generally a dozen or more, and swoop in after the dancers as they fly. I wrote a poem about it. For the poem’s sake I named the dancer, but I am not at all sure I am right.
There was a gang of Cedar Waxwings,
silent but deadly, at the little drainage
pond by the medical center parking
lot, picking off newly emerged Dusky
Dancer Damselflies on their maiden
flights…swooping, like the guided
missiles that they are, across the pond,
taking the Damsels on the wing…
It was awesome, totally awe inspiring,
to watch them. Such precision. Such
grace. (Of course I will admit maybe
not so much fun if you happen to be
an unsuspecting Dusky Dancer.)
Wood Lilies after rain.
Wood Lily, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine
We finally got some much-needed rain in Southern Maine over the weekend, and I hoped that it would pop the Wood Lilies out on the Kennebunk Plains. I had been disappointed with the show last week, when, if it followed past patterns, it should have been at its height. A visit to the Plains yesterday did not disappoint. Where there were single blossoms before the rain, there are now good stands similar to last year’s bloom. In one small area we found all three color varieties, from deep red to this bright “safety-vest” orange. The deep orange variety continues to dominate, but at least this year, all three are showing. This close up of a bloom still wet from overnight rains, also shows off the purple in the stamen, anthers, and in the dots on the base of leaves, but the light orange makes the contrast between the yellow base of the petals and the upper petals less obvious.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm. 1/80 @ ISO 100 @ f8 (program shift for greater depth of field). Processed in Lightroom.
Faceoff: Brown Violet-ear Hummingbirds
Brown Violet-ear Hummingbirds, Rio Santiago Resort, Hondruas
I have mentioned before that the Brown Violet-ear Hummingbirds were so dominent on this trip to Honduras (the Point and Shoot Nature Photographer adventure at the Lodge at Pico Bonito) that they suppressed the numbers of other species that we saw. They also got in each others’ way a lot 🙂 We saw a lot of confrontations between hummers competing for the same feeders and the same space. The Brown Violet-ear is not a flashy bird by hummingbird standards, but it makes up for it in attitude!
Sony RX10iii at 530mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 640 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Wood Lily. Happy Sunday!
Wood Lily, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
I have been posting images from our trip to Honduras for the past two weeks now. I have been home a week already. Of course I have been out around home a few times too. 🙂 I had to check for dragons and damsels and for the Wood Lilies at Day Brook Pond for one thing. This is Wood Lily season, and this week last year, there were the best stands of Wood Lily out on the Kennebunk Plains that I have ever seen. We have had a long dry spell in Maine this year, and the flowers are much less numerous, and somewhat late to bloom, but there were a few when I visited on Wednesday. It rained yesterday, and it is raining hard at the moment. That may be just what the Wood Lilies need to pop out in full display. We will see tomorrow when I get back to the Kennebunk Plains.
It would take an ungenerous eye indeed not to appreciate the beauty of the Wood Lily. They grow sparsely in open shade along the edges and in the clearings in the forest, and out in full sun on the Plains. They appear to like sandy soil, but with a rich mix of humus. They range from deep red (rare in Maine) to the bright orange caught in this image, always touched with yellow at the base of the petals, and spattered with purple/brown spots. The prominent Stigma and Stamens are tall and graceful, with large velvety Anthers that produce a lot of pollen. They attract many insects, like the little Green Metalic Bee you see on the petal at the right.
Wood Lilies are the essence of a wild flower. They don’t do well in cultivation, so they have rarely been tamed to ornament our yards and grounds. They grow where they will, and boom only to suit themselves, briefly. You have to go out into the woods and uncultivated fields at just the right time to see them. I had never seen one until about 5 years ago when I found two growing along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. I had no idea they bloomed in such numbers on the Kennebunk Plains until 3 years ago when that bright flash of orange drew me out away from the road. Now I go look for them every year. While they are apparently doing well in Maine, they are threatened or endangered in many states, as true wild-lands grow more rare. To me, they will always be a celebration of God’s generosity of spirit and sense of wild beauty. One more reason to be thankful and happy on this Sunday. May you find the Wood Lilies in bloom, and always be filled with light.